Twitter

The beauty of Twitter is it allows users to connect with people they do not know using common interests. If a job recruiter is interested in seeking new employees, he/she is likely to already have a healthy catalog of Twitter followers to send out a tweet to. The Twitter tool Twellow searches user biographies and the URLs on user bios. While recruiters are limited to 140 character messages in their advertisements for employment, the benefit comes in how accessible and, ultimately, viral these messages come to be. A response from one person can domino into responses from multiple people as public back-and-forth conversation ensues.

Twitter is also user-friendly for the job-seeker in search of job postings. Several job search engines scan Twitter for information about available positions. For example, by posting a listing on TwitterJobSearch.com, users can search Twitter for jobs by keyword. This will mean strategically phrasing your listing to fit what you expect your future employees to be looking for. By experimenting with the tools available on Twitter, job recruiters can greatly improve their chances of finding new employees.

Blogs

Blogs are often overlooked as a means of seeking employees. However, recently, large blogs have started to include job banks in their websites using software from companies such as Job-a-matic.  Some blogs that have embraced this functionality include Guy Kawasaki’s blog, GigaOM, and Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy Blog. Using these blogs as examples, recruiters can utilize currently existing blogs such as these or create their own employment-based blog to solely focus on recruitment and job banks.

Or, if a job recruiter is looking to be a little more cunning, it might be a wise idea to comment on reputable blogs that are relevant to the open job position, advertising the need for an employee.

Smartphone Job Apps

Sometimes timing is everything. A recent survey by LinkUp found that 20% of job seekers use their Smartphones to look for a job. Other apps like CareerBuilder, JobCompass, Monster, BusyBee and a new app from Manpower can help job recruiters find a new employee by posting a listing that fits a customized and filtered search matching required qualifications for the job. Also, these apps permit job recruiters to take advantage of RSS or alerts from these sites. Applications give the employer more control and particular selection over who they choose to interview or hire. Using these new Smartphone apps enable job recruiters to keep track of responses no matter where they are.

YouTube

More and more, job seekers are making video resumes and uploading them to YouTube or other video-sharing sites. These resumes give you a chance to see the applicant “in action,” to observe their interpersonal skills, speaking ability, and other attributes that translate more clearly to video than paper.  For many people, video-sharing sites can function as quasi-interviews, enabling them to stand out from the crowd and to inject their resume with a touch of humanity and transform them into something more than a list of qualifications on a sheet of paper. This assists in expediting the hiring process, as an intuitive job recruiter is likely to be able to filter out who is qualified and who is not after sorting through a variety of applicants in a relatively short period of time.

All in all, there is way more to social media networking than just LinkedIn. With a little creativity, job recruiters can now reach out to potential employees in a plethora of ways and improve their chances of finding new employees quickly.

This post was submitted by Guest Blogger Anne Berlow. Berlow is a content specialist at Capterra, a business software resource with over 300 directories, including recruiting software and medical billing software.

Cross-generational teams bring challenges and rewards. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of hiring managers said managing multigenerational work teams poses a challenge. But more than one-third of workers polled felt having a group of employees at different experience levels increases productivity.

What are the most significant generational differences when it comes to workforce planning?

• Generational views on next career steps differ. For Gen Y, looking for a new job is the most common post-recession career plan, whereas Gen Xers polled said they are more inclined to update their skills. For baby boomers surveyed, staying put at their companies was the most commonly cited post-recession career plan.
• More Gen Yers (36 percent) than Gen Xers (30 percent) and baby boomers (24 percent) planned to look for new job opportunities.
• Gen Xers polled were more inclined to enhance their skills sets (38 percent) and build tenure with their companies (33 percent) in the aftermath of the recession than other generations.
• A greater percentage of baby boomers (54 percent) than Gen X (46 percent) or Gen Y (39 percent) respondents said they will work past the traditional retirement age.
• More Gen Xers (34 percent) than baby boomers (27 percent) said they had increased their retirement savings since the recession began.
• More baby boomers (54 percent) than Gen X (45 percent) or Gen Y (35 percent) employees identified the greatest challenge when working with multiple generations as having differing work ethics and approaches to work/life balance; more Gen Yers attributed difficulties to differing communication styles (29 percent for Gen Y versus 16 percent for both Gen X respondents and baby boomers).

But different generations don’t always see the world differently? Many generation similarities do exist.

“Understanding the values shared by nearly all employees, particularly in light of changing economic conditions, can help companies enhance their recruitment and retention efforts,” said Max Messmer, chairman and CEO of Robert Half International and author of “Human Resources Kit For Dummies,” second edition (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

• For all generations surveyed, working for a stable company and having job security were two of the most important aspects of the work environment, beating out having a short commute or working for a socially responsible company.
• When evaluating employment offers, salary, company stability and benefits were the most important factors for all three generations.
• Health care coverage, dental coverage, vacation time and 401(k) matching were the highest valued benefits for all generations surveyed.
• The most commonly cited benefit of being part of multigenerational work teams was bringing together various experience levels to provide knowledge in specific areas.

“Many employees, particularly Gen Y professionals, are biding their time in their current employment situations and plan to make a move when they feel the economy is on firmer footing,” said Brett Good, a Robert Half International district president. “Now is the time for employers to take action and outline career paths within their company for strong performers. “

Today’s hiring managers tend to be from a generation when tattoos were limited to Marines, bikers and gypsies. When these managers interviewed for their first jobs, even facial hair for men and open-toe shoes for women were a no-no. Today, facial hair is commonplace and hair length runs from the shaven head to a neatly tied pony-tail. Female candidates arrive to the interview with cleavage exposed and “dressy” flip-flops. If you take a look around most workplaces today, employers have either given up trying to regulate dress code or just don’t care. 

But that still doesn’t stop candidates from getting under the skin of hiring managers with almost any display of tattoos and piercings. That’s a problem because 40% of adults ages 18 to 40 now have a tattoo or non-earlobe piercing, according to the Pew Research Center’s Gen Next Survey.

Young workers — even those going through business school and looking to be corporate leaders one day — have ramped up both the number and placement of this body art. Such markings started to become more mainstream due to the tattooed punk movement of the 1980s. This has created a firestorm of activity to create personal appearance policies that include rules about tattoos and piercings. But as many employers will tell you, it’s not that easy without discriminating against certain classes of workers and without significantly reducing the size of the talent pool. 

In fact, despite all the talk from HR and management about the unprofessional appearance of candidates, just 36% of organizations surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management had a policy for body piercing; and only 22% had policies for body art. That compares to 97% of organizations that maintained policies on clothing and 70% on footwear.

Candidates and employees often feel the employer has no right to restrict the display of piercings and tattoos. That’s not true. Companies can limit employees’ personal expression on the job as long as they don’t infringe on their civil liberties. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, employers are allowed to impose dress codes and appearance policies as long as they don’t discriminate against a person’s race, color, religion, age, national origin or gender. Companies faced with inked and pierced applicants can demand eyebrow rings or tongue rings be removed and tattoos covered to help project the proper image to customers. That is because some customers, particularly older ones who dislike tattoos, could be turned off and they may be less likely to do business with it. Loss of business is a justifiable reason to restrict the display of body art in whatever form it takes.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to enforce. For instance, let’s say you deem it okay for a female employee to have a maximum of two visible piercings, limited to the ear. But you forbid male employees from wearing even one earring. Does this open up the employer to gender discrimination? What if the nose piercing is a religious tradition? Does this exempt the employee from the policy?

Employers will be expected to prove that any policy is job-relevant and just driven by personal preference or bias. Those who disapprove of inked-up and pierced workers must learn to accept those who are willing to follow company guidelines and request that these employees cover up their tattoos and jewelry — or face a shrinking pool of applicants too.

Like facial hair and long hair for men and open-toe shoes and mandatory skirts and stockings for women, tattoos and piercing policies will eventually become relics. I expect there will be a sea change in attitudes toward tattoos in the next 25 years as tattooed and pierced peers begin running more companies. But what goes around comes around. I wonder how the next generation of workers will test their bosses regarding what’s acceptable attire in the office. Then again, the concept of “going to work” is already becoming a thing of the past.

There is a finite pool of talent worldwide. Support for our technological and physical infrastructure is in short supply.

Technology has increased its pace whereas educational advancement and talent creation have slowed down.

An obsolete 20^th century education-to-employment system can no longer cope with the realities of a 21^st century global labor market.

40% of workers in the United States and Canada have basic workforce education skill deficiencies.

Only 25% of America’s current eligible workers comfortably meet the new job criteria.

About 95 million adults are reading at or below the 8^th grade level of comprehension, disqualifying them for most well-paying jobs.

More than 90 million U.S. workers currently lack the reading, writing and math skills to do their jobs properly.

Compare this to Brazil, where 88% of adults and 97% of youth are literate and 70% of students complete high school.

Although 64% of high schools graduating seniors enter some form of post-secondary education, only 25% graduate with a college degree.

15% of U.S. high schools produce 50% of all the dropouts.

Young people are eager consumers of technology, but not interested in working in technology careers.

Recruiting, retaining and developing skilled people will become so challenging that many businesses will be forced out of existence.

Computers did not cause mass unemployment, but they did create a major upheaval in the nature of work.

75% of U.S. jobs will require both a good liberal-arts-based general education plus post secondary technical training.

The current education-to-employment bureaucracy chokes the innovation and change we need.

Forget Frederick Taylor’s stopwatch management. Start treating people like “brain workers.”

… it seems that the world will end, not with an explosion, but with a slow grinding halt as everything just stops working. A. Brown

We live in a moment in history when change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing. R.D. Laing

Most of these random throughts were highlights from “Winning The Global Talent Showdown“ by Edward Gordon. Ed will be my guest on my radio show, Workforce Trends, on June 16 at 11AM EDT. Tune in!

Based on my random thoughts for this week, I must ask: Are employers underestimating the complexity and pace of change? What do you think?

One of the hottest recruiting tools these days is Twitter. Not a day goes by that I don’t receive a dozen or more blogs, articles and invitations to webinars about how to use Twitter for advertising jobs and sourcing candidates. What’s even better, I’m even starting to read a few success stories.

But truth be told…while Twitter is today’s media darling, its use is still not mainstream. Twitter is a recruiting tool with tremendous potential but it currently lacks universal appeal.  With time, that scenario may change. 

Nonetheless, I do encourage clients to use Twitter to publicize job openings and even connect with potential candidates because every little effort helps in that search for the diamond in the rough. You just don’t know how and where you’re going to find that next good employee fit.

Questionable ROI is not the case for Facebook when it comes to recruiting hourly and entry-level management and sales positions. (For more senior and experienced candidates, my preference is still LinkedIn when it comes to social networking sites.)  Facebook simply has too many eyes watching and thumbs typing every day. With a potential audience of 200 million users daily (total Facebook users exceed 400 million and half of them visit the site daily), a presence on Facebook is just too good an opportunity to pass up. And remember that the candidate you’re attempting to reach may not be your initial target. Social networking is about word-of-mouth. Using Facebook to announce job openings isn’t about sponsoring ads and posting help wanted ads as status updates. It’s about letting your network know that you have an opportunity for someone they might know. Recruiting on Facebook isn’t about just word-of-mouth but as Erik Qualman says, it’s “world of mouth.”

But just creating a Facebook Fan Page is not enough. Successful candidate sourcing on Facebook requires a strategy – a relatively easy, low-cost, 3-step strategy but a strategy nonetheless.

1. Create a Custom Facebook Landing Page for your company. This can be accomplished quite easily by installing a free Facebook application called Static FBML. This application allows you to create a custom design with basic html code, like the one I created for my client Quantum-Services. A graphic designer can create an image for you to post to your landing page or you can use a program like AdKreator. This is a fantastically easy program for non-graphic designers like myself. I used AdKreator to create the ad for my client and my pages as well. With the Static FBML application, you can then add and name a new tab such as “Now Hiring” to the menu bar. Facebook users can click on the tab to apply for jobs. Equally important is that you don’t have to be a Facebook user to see Facebook Business Pages. These web pages are public profiles, searchable by the likes of Google and other search engines. In effect, a Facebook Page is like having a free website on the most popular networking site in the world. Non-Facebook users who find your site when searching are directed to any page you choose. In this case, my client elected to direct visitors to the recruiting page.  But you have the option to direct them to any page on your Facebook site. You can even create multiple pages and test the responses.

2. Engage candidates on your Wall. Good candidates are looking for the right place to work just as much as employers are seeking the right candidates to hire. Before they apply, they want to know what it’s like to work for your company. What’s management like?  What are the employees like?  Getting employees to post updates about their daily activities gives candidates an honest, inside look at the job. Having employees respond to questions posted by candidates is an excellent way to engage them at the front-line and differentiate your company from the competition.

3. Post video clips of what it’s like to work at your company. Record interviews with employees. Give a tour of your facility. Demonstrate what a new hire might expect on his or her first day. These can be added on the same landing page or by creating a second one. The easiest way to display videos on Facebook is to upload them to YouTube and link the YouTube video to a landing page. That pathway also offers the advantage of your videos getting viewed on YouTube (and searched on Google since Google owns YouTube.) You can also upload them directly to your Facebook site.  You can also run contests to encourage employee participation in monitoring and posting updates to the site as well as referrals. The more activity on the site, the more likely your Facebook Business Pages rank will increase in the search engines and the more likely candidates will find you.

Click on the link for a free step-by-step guide to creating a custom Facebook landing page.